Author: uristra

It was the final week of the three week playoff, and I entered with a lead. Despite some bad luck and a wrong start/sit decision, I was able to hang on and win, thanks mostly to to Saquon Barkley. The bad luck was mostly starting D.J. Moore, who got concussed early and ended up with one reception for one yard. It was a little bit the Ingram injury that caused him to miss a quarter of the game, and maybe that touchdown that Justice Hill got. The bad start/sit decision was Russell Wilson over Drew Brees. I played the matchup over the hot streak, and that turned out to be the wrong move. In all, I left about 60 points on the table by starting Wilson in two out of the three games in the playoff.

But in the end, it didn’t matter. I entered Monday night’s game solidly in second place and 13 points behind first, with the first place team having nobody, and me having Davante Adams. He scored enough points to win. The third place team needed more than 50 points from Aaron Rodgers to catch me, which did not happen. So, I won first place.

That’s it for the season. Now it is time to reflect on the strategy I used in the Fanball leagues, which might be pointless since it seems clear that Fanball will be changing its guillotine league rules.

Anyway, I do not expect to post for a while. I hope you got some use out of my writing this season.

It was Week 2 of Fanball’s 3-week playoff. I went from worst to first. Last week, I lamented that starting Russell Wilson instead of Drew Brees was the difference between first and last. The scores were just about 140 – 120 – 120 – 100.

This week, my team crushed it. I started Drew Brees, who scored close to 40 points in Fanball’s 6-points-per-pass-TD system. Zeke Elliott and Saquon Barkley also scored over 30 points. Davante Adams, Travis Kelce and Mark Ingram scored over 20 points. My only sub-20 player was Stefon Diggs, with 12. Overall, my team scored 185 points, and now leads 284 – 272 – 257 – 253. It is a pretty close match which should make for an exciting weekend.

I’m going to be with family in Canada this weekend, which I hope won’t interfere with team management. I will probably need to remember to check injury updates at noon on Sunday without my phone reminding me.

There are no more waivers in Fanball leagues, so I’m writing this just for the 2 or 3 of you who are interested in my teams, to update you about my tragic week.

At my last update, I was surviving in 3 out of my original 9 leagues. In my Fanball leagues, there were no waivers left, so Week 13 rosters were final rosters. I was reasonable well-positioned, with good starters and at least decent backups in every position, including quarterback and tight end. In my ESPN league, I had enough FAAB advantage to ensure that I get my pick of the free agents for the rest of the season.

On Thanksgiving, disaster struck. I was sick and had a sleepless night, which is not too uncommon, but we also went to Thanksgiving dinner at a relative’s house, which meant drinking and parenting my two little kids, with no time to recover until the late afternoon. I crashed into the guest bed for a long nap, and slept through the news that Julio Jones was out. Not switching out Julio for Davante Adams was fatal. That 24-point swing was the difference between last place and 2nd place. So I’m eliminated in my Green Knights league.

In my ESPN league, I just had bad games from many players and no really good games from anyone. Mahomes 19.5 was not great, and then I got 10.7 from Lev Bell, 8.9 from Nik Chubb, 6.7 from DJ Chark, 10.1 from Tyreek Hill, 5.4 from Zack Ertz, and 0 from Tyler Lockett. My highest position player scores were 18.8 from Keenan Allen, 16.7 from Austin Ekeler, and 13.4 from Dalvin Cook. These would be okay top scores in Week 5, but in Week 13 they mean elimination. In retrospect, starting Lockett and Dalvin Cook were mistakes, since both had been cleared to start after injury concerns. I lost by 7 points, which means that if I had started any 2 backups (other than Julio Jones) over Lockett and Cook – any 2 of Calvin Ridley, Saquon Barkley, Amari Cooper, Cooper Kupp, Chris Carson, and Todd Gurley – I would have survived. In fact, my 7 active bench players (the above plus Deshaun Watson) scored nearly as many points as my 11 starters, getting outscored only 133.7 – 131.9.

That leaves me alive in only one league. My starters this week for Team The Bourgeoisie are:

Last week of the regular season in Fanball, which means the last week of FAAB. Here’s how it went. Not sure how useful this is – the FAAB discrepancies from league to league are insane. Hence, the three highest spending totals are all from the same league (Jacobs and Wilson were my acquisitions), and Kenyan Drake went for $42. In other leagues, Zeke Elliott is going for $4 and Chubb for $1. In honor of the last week, here are *all* the bids.

I survived easily in my three remaining leagues, and ended up in far better FAAB position than the week before. In my ESPN league, the only other team with substantial FAAB got eliminated. The result: at waiver time I had 442 FAAB, and no other team had more than 5. That means that for the rest of the season, I can just get whatever player I want for $6 or less. So I picked up Chris Carson, Dalvin Cook, Julio Jones, Tyreek Hill, and Tyler Lockett for a grand total of $30.

In my Fanball league where I had a substantial FAAB disadvantage to the top team, and was basically tied with another team, they both went on spending sprees, so I’m now basically even with one and asvantged over the others. Of course, I missed out on good waivers due to their spending sprees, so I’m feeling at a bit of a disadvantage for survival this week.

Remaining FAAB: not much. There’s one guy in one league who still has his original 1000 FAAB. I don’t know if he’s asleep at the wheel, trying to prove a point, or just adopting too extreme a version of the spend low, spend late strategy that I recommend. With only one week left of waivers, you should *not* have 1000 FAAB at this point – you should have been building your team in the last few weeks.

What a week. I lost two of my four remaining Fanball leagues, so I went from feeling good about things to feeling not so good. In one of my two remaining leagues, I’m not thrilled with my team, and another team has played the FAAB waiting game much better than me and leads me in FAAB, 798 – 388. I feel like I’m playing for second place in that one. Here’s my team, called The Bourgeoisie:

My two eliminated teams were Team Jacobin and Team Sydney Carton. Team Jacobin started Russell Wilson, Mark Ingram, Todd Gurley, Keenan Allen, Julio Jones, Darren Waller, and Odell Beckham. Team Sydney Carton started Drew Brees, Josh Jacobs, Todd Gurley, Emmanuel Sanders, Keenan Allen, Jason Witten, and Julio Jones. I think both teams were better on paper than some of the competitors, so losing was unlucky, but then luck management is wha guillotine leagues are all about.

In my ESPN league, which is superflex + 4 flex, I trailed much of the week and only survived because of Amari Cooper’s huge game. I drafted very well and was able to be restrained in my FAAB spending, with the result that I have a pretty good lineup: